


when you're gone i'll say your name

by pistol_red



Category: Warm Bodies - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Female Friendship, Gen, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 15:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pistol_red/pseuds/pistol_red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nora knows what the odds are when Julie goes missing. She's not an idiot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you're gone i'll say your name

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the movie Warm Bodies and then promptly forgot everything about it except that I wanted to write something about the character Nora from it. This is probably horrendously inaccurate with all Warm Bodies canon and my characterization of Nora ended up completely OOC, but, my fingers wanted this to exist, so sorry.
> 
> This story is from Nora's POV after Julie went missing, because I figured she would automatically assume she died with how long she'd been gone and everything. But, like I said, I forgot everything about canon, so, what do I know.

Nora could tell what had happened before anyone approached her. There was a heightened sense of...not sadness exactly; people barely had time to be sad anymore. But, there was an extra kick of pity and hopelessness mixed in with something sour. Numerous “I told you so's” were on the air tonight.

Julie was dead. At best. At worst she was rotting somewhere out there in no man's land eating people's brains, as you do. Which really, wasn't that terrible an end when you considered it was what happened to most of the population. But still, most of the population hadn't been Nora's best friend.

Nora was nineteen years old when she first met Julie. She had just battled through a swarm of zombies, ran ten miles straight and lost her last remaining ally, her little brother Addis in the throng. She had made it through though, and she had lost a finger to do it. She was caked in sweat, grime and blood, gasping loudly as her knees finally gave out from under her, but she got there in the end. She finally hit humans. Though her speed and stamina were not anything to brag about, she'd admit to remembering races when she was little and how those would turn out, it's amazing what adrenaline can make you do when it really comes down to it. 

Nora has since then always had a special relationship with her adrenaline. 

She wasn't proud of the way she acted after that, after she hit humanity again. She had been away for a really long time, but she knew that wasn't an excuse. She knew she didn't have any excuses to fall back on, I mean, she was in the middle of a zombie apocalypse there really wasn't time for her to act out. So she met Julie, Julie tried to be her friend because she thought Nora needed it, or, maybe in retrospect, Julie needed it too. Julie always needed people. 

She shouldn't have slept with Perry when Julie was in love with him, she gets that. She understood why Julie looked at her like she did after that but she wasn't expecting it to hurt as much as it did. She wasn't even really friends with Julie, it wasn't her fault that she wasn't being a good friend or whatever, really. She didn't sign up for this. 

She remembers that and winces, but she also remembers volunteering to go out beyond the wall to get supplies because she's good with a gun and they need people to do the dirty work and she's one her own now so why not? She remembers how holding a gun with a hand with one less finger felt different, and she remembers how she shook when the boneys came after her and how all she could think about was her brother's face, screaming and crying, him kicking his legs out desperately as they got to him, never stopping fighting for a second until it was all over. 

Julie saved her that day. She shot all three of the boneys bearing down on Nora right through the skull but that wasn't how she saved her. 

Something broke a little bit, that day, Nora figures. Something deep inside her that needed to crack, and when she got back behind the wall she dropped her weapons, clutched at her hands and cried until she was gasping for air. 

Julie had been there. Julie had held her close and kept her safe and made terrible jokes that actually made Nora smile and it was that night that Nora realized what she had to do, and she had to put everything into living or nothing at all.

Julie had asked her what she liked. They spent an two hours straight talking about cats. Nora doubts she'll ever forget when Julie gave her that little white kitten and said, "He's yours, give him a cool name, yeah?" She ended up naming him Adrenaline. Julie said it was lame but it caught on pretty fast regardless of Julie being a buzzkill over Nora's cat naming capabilities. 

Nora was good with a gun but she didn't like them. She liked fixing things, she learned when she really got what the friendship Julie had offered her at the beginning meant, and she remembered once that she loved to heal things. Julie told her that their world needed people to fight like crazy but it also needed just as many people to help it heal and grow and laugh once in every year or so. 

Nora figured out that she could be one of those healers, and something changed after that. Julie, Perry and Nora would always take time to go on hikes and tell crazy stories and just hang out, not worrying about anything, it kept you sane she discovered. It kept you laughing. Nora found it to be a little bit contagious, just a little, and started getting known around town as the joker, who was practically always lighthearted and up for a good laugh, running around, being inappropriate with Julie, getting people to laugh with or at her. That helped people too, she learned. And it didn't make her want to cry like shooting someone did. Yes, even zombies. It stopped having any appeal after she had to kill zombies of people she'd known, people she'd loved. 

Nora closed her eyes and let a couple of tears fall as she breathed in deeply, just for a moment. There were always things to be fixed and people to heal but right now she would just take one minute for her best friend.


End file.
